As 2018 neared a close, Robert Schellenberg certainly faced a grim future.

His recent drug-smuggling sentence meant another decade or so in a Chinese prison, after a years-long criminal record back home in British Columbia. But at least now the Canadian’s family could visit him for the first time in four years, and an appeal of his conviction was in the works.

Those glimmers of hope vanished in a terrible flash Monday, as a court in China sentenced the 36-year-old to death, dramatically underlining fears that his case has become the latest bargaining chip in China’s bitter feud with Canada.

Experts link his case to Canada’s arrest of an executive with China’s Huawei technology giant, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the sentence – meted out at a hastily conducted retrial – a matter of “extreme concern.”

For friends and family, the news was simply tragic. Despite a checkered past as a small-city drug dealer, with addiction problems of his own, they called Schellenberg a thoughtful, warm human being.

“Worse case fear confirmed,” his aunt, Lauri Nelson-Jones, told the National Post Monday. “Our thoughts are with Robert at this time. It is rather unimaginable what he must be feeling and thinking. It is a horrific, unfortunate, heartbreaking situation.”

Schellenberg was sentenced just two months ago to 15 years in prison for his part in an alleged operation to dispatch 200 kilograms of crystal meth from the port city of Dalian to Australia, the case unfolding mostly in obscurity since his 2014 arrest.

In this image taken from a video footage run by China’s CCTV, Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg attends his retrial at the Dalian Intermediate People’s Court in Dalian, northeastern China’s Liaoning province on Monday, Jan. 14, 2019.CCTV via AP

But late last month, Chinese media suddenly publicized his appeal hearing, and then the appeal court unexpectedly ordered a retrial at the urging of prosecutors who wanted a tougher penalty.

The retrial was scheduled for barely two weeks later, and the verdict and sentence were reportedly handed down Monday with little deliberation.

Unlike one of the other accused in the case, Schellenberg’s death sentence did not come with a two-year suspension, which usually results in the penalty being commuted to life in prison, noted Margaret Lewis, a law professor at New Jersey’s Seton Hall University and an expert on the Chinese legal system.

He can appeal, and all death penalties are reviewed – and invariably confirmed – by the Supreme People’s Court, but without political intervention, his prospects look grim, she said.

“Unless there is some dramatic turn of events, this is marching toward execution in the not too distant future,” said Lewis. “This is the most severe sentence allowed under Chinese law. It is death, with execution (after) crossing the Ts and dotting the Is.”

Trudeau said Monday the government will do all it can to help Schellenberg.

“It is of extreme concern to us as a government, as it should be to all our international friends and allies, that China has chosen to arbitrarily apply [the] death penalty,” he told reporters in Ottawa.

Chinese authorities have responded furiously to the detention of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, who is under house arrest in Vancouver as Canadian courts consider a U.S. request to extradict her on fraud-related charges.

Two other Canadians, ex-diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, were detained on unspecified national-security allegations, actions China’s ambassador to Canada has called a “defence” response to Meng’s arrest.

Schellenberg’s case dates from well before that event, and Chinese authorities have executed other foreigners for drug crimes in the past.

But the accelerated pace of the appeal hearing, retrial and sentencing, along with the invitation for foreign media to cover the appeal, are all highly unusual, raising suspicions the Abbotsford, B.C., native has become a political pawn, China watchers say.

If that’s the case, the Chinese have gone from detaining Canadians as hostages to “actually threatening — subtly, to be sure — to kill a Canadian who would otherwise not have been executed if it does not get what it wants,” wrote Donald Clarke, an expert on the country’s legal system at George Washington University law school.

A more complete picture of Schellenberg himself emerged Monday, suggesting he is no stranger to the criminal courts. His record includes repeated drug-trafficking and impaired-driving convictions in the Abbotsford area from 2003 to 2012, and jail time.

After he pleaded guilty to trafficking cocaine and heroin in 2011, a judge in Chilliwack, B.C., sentenced him to two years in jail, according to court documents obtained by the Post. Justice Neill Brown noted that Schellenberg’s father “had turned his back on him because of his criminal history,” that the defendant was “deeply ashamed,” and had started abusing pain medications after a work accident, the judge said.

But Brown also stressed that Schellenberg’s apartment had been a “distribution centre” for drugs and he had been given chances in the past.

“He is either going to cure himself of his addiction and reform himself and turn off the path that he has been on or he is not,” the judge said. “I should caution you. Do not ever underestimate the seriousness of this kind of an offence.”

His aunt described Schellenberg as quiet, easy-going and “really chill.” A former high school football player, her nephew had gone to work in the Alberta oil fields before visiting Thailand and falling in love with it, she said. He returned a few months before his 2014 arrest, and then notified his family he was traveling to China. Relatives have been allowed only to exchange texts every three months since his detention, when Canadian diplomats visit him in jail, said Nelson-Jones.

Terry McBride, a long-time friend from Abbotsford days, said she and other friends cannot believe what has happened, calling Schellenberg a “wonderful human being.”

“Kind of a quiet guy. A little shy,” she said Monday. “He just really wanted to work and travel, those were his goals.”

Prosecutors alleged that Schellenberg was at the heart of the operation to send meth to Australia, arranging to obtain tires in which to hide the drugs, and trying to fly to Thailand when he learned police were on the trail, according to a Chinese court website.

But Schellenberg told the court Monday he had been traveling through southeast Asia as a tourist and was framed by the translator he met when he came to China, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.